Wurt is not that acidic which is why you can use copper and brass fittings in brewpots. Beer gets more acidic as it ferments and the acidity shows on the inside of any brass fittings, like brass faucets you may have installed in your kegerator. And BTW, modern brass is a alloy of copper and zinc. The anodes are zinc, not magnesium. Magnesium would react violently with water.

The debate over the saftey of the zinc plating goes on, but I figured "better safe than sorry."

The link I posted above suggested soaking in an acid solution, so I thought I'd try Star San. I let the entire 120V/1650W Emerson element soak for a few hours in gallon bucket of some old Star San that was getting pretty cloudy. That turned it from a shiny chrome finish to a flat black. After that, all it took was some light polishing with Scotch-Brite to clean it up to bright copper.

Here are a couple of shots from before and after polishing. Might not mean anything, but it was easy and I'll feel a little safer using the element now.

Nice. Mine looks like the first pic. When it came it looked like chrome. It's boiled wort twice now and prior to that water a few times. I've yet to taste either batch, but I wonder if anyone has done the math to figure out how much zinc would be in the beer and whether it constitutes dangerous? We take Zinc supplements at times, yes?

I did some testing on the elements that I have. The resistance of the Camco 02853 was 10.2 ohms. But according to their specs it works out that it should be 9.6 ohms. What that means is that at 120V it actually puts out just over 1400 watts (not the 1500W listed.) And as to their claim that it's low watt density. Doing the math it comes out somewhere around 125 watts/sq in. That puts it much closer to a HWD element than to a LWD, and nowhere near the ULWD they call it.

By comparison, the Emerson 1650W element that has also been discussed here works out to around 50 watts/sq in. That actually puts it in the range of an ULWD element. Also, my meter read 8.7 ohms, which is exactly where it should for the voltage and watts listed in thier specs.

The thing to take away from this is to not trust anything that Camco says or prints about their elements. Check for yourself before installing.